Floorball, a type of floor hockey, is an indoor team sport which was developed in the 1970s in Sweden. Floorball is most popular in areas where the sport has developed the longest, such as the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.^{[citation needed]} The game is played indoors on a gym floor, making it a year-round sport at amateur and professional levels. There are professional leagues, such as Finland's Salibandyliiga and Sweden's Svenska Superligan.

While there are 54 members of the International Floorball Federation (IFF), the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland have finished in most of the coveted 1st, 2nd and 3rd places at the Floorball World Championships.

In addition to those four countries, floorball is gaining popularity in countries such as Latvia, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and the United States.^{[citation needed]}

The game was invented in early 1970s in Gothenburg, Sweden. The sport began as something that was played for fun as a pastime at schools. After a decade or so, floorball began showing up in Scandinavian countries such as Finland, Norway and Sweden, where the once school pastime was becoming a developed sport. Formal rules soon were developed, and clubs began to form. After some time, several countries developed national associations, and the IFF was founded in 1986.

Alexander Rudd (born 1981) is an English award-winning composer, songwriter and conductor working in film, television, theatre and the concert hall.

At the age of 16, Rudd won the National Young Composer of the Year Award. He is a Fulbright Scholar and studied at Trinity College of Music and the University of Southern California. In 2009, Rudd received a UK Film Council Award, enabling him to work and study in Los Angeles. His mentor is American composer and songwriter Randy Newman.

He was a student at Our Lady’s High School, Fulwood, Preston – although he also spent two years at Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit Catholic boarding school in the north of England. From the age of sixteen he worked as a pianist and singer entertainer in bars and clubs working all over the UK. He studied composition at Trinity College of Music with Alwynne Pritchard who introduced him to the works of contemporary composers such as Xenakis, Ligeti, Schoenberg and Messiaen. In the evenings he worked as the resident Jazz singer and pianist at The Dorchester, Claridges and The Savoy in London. He also taught the piano and worked as a Musical Director at James Allen Girls School in Dulwich. During this time he met composer Howard Blake who encouraged him to pursue a career as a film composer.